The Swedish Teacher

Hej!

When learning a foreign language you often struggle with the words and expressions that seem to mean almost the same. When you speak you get it almost right, but not quite. Speaking Swedish it might be tough to master the expressions for “the same”, “different”, “a difference” etc. It is not always easy to get “samma”, “annorlunda” and “skillnad” and therefore we will take a closer look at these expressions today.

We will start with some expressions tu use when expressing that someone is like someone or looks like someone.

är lik, likt, lika

lik/likt/lika is a type of  adjective  and can either mean that you look like someone or that you act like someone. A couple of examples:

Anna är lik sin mamma. Hon har ljust hår och blå ögon precis som sin mamma.

(Anna looks like her mother. She has blond hair and blue eyes just like her mother.)

Anna är lik sin mamma. Hon är glad för det mesta precis som sin mamma.

(Anna is just like her mother. She is happy most of the time just like her mother.)

ABBA-Benny och ABBA-Björn är lika. Båda har brunt hår och skägg.

(ABBA-Benny and ABBA-Björn look the same/are alike. They both have brown hair and a beard.)

liknar

“Liknar” is a verb and it also means “looks like” or in Swedish “ser ut som”. You can use “liknar” instead of “är lik” and get more or less the same meaning. Like this:

Anna liknar sin mamma både till utseendet och sättet.

(Anna both looks like and acts like her mother.)

It is not only for people we use “liknar” but also for things, like cars for example:

Det där liknar din bil. Du har väl en röd Volvo?

(That looks like your car. You have a red Volvo, don’t you?)

The same content can be expressed with “ser ut som”:

Det där ser ut som din bil. Du har väl en röd Volvo?

(That looks like your car. You have a red Volvo, don’t you?)

likadan, likadant, likadana

Another way to say “similar” or “identical” is to use likadan/likadant/likadana. As you can see this is an adjective and you need to think of en/ett/plural of the noun. A few examples:

Lisa har en likadan tröja som Annika. Båda två har köpt sina tröjor på H&M.

(Lisa has exactly the same sweater as Annika; they’ve both bought them at H&M.)

Jag bor i ett likadant hus som min granne. Båda husen är byggda på 70-talet.

(My house looks exactly like my neighbor’s. Both houses were built in the seventies.)

Det är vanligt att tvillingar har likadana kläder.

(It is common for twins to wear identical clothes.)

samma

When something (or someone) is not just identical but actually the exact same object or person, we should use the word “samma” (the same one) instead of “likadan”. Because it’s common also for native speakers to say “samma” when they actually mean “likadan” there is no reason to be embarrassed if you make the same mistake. Here are a couple of examples when you should use “samma”:

Jonas och Rikard är födda på samma dag.

(Jonas and Rikard were born the same day.)

Jag hade samma historielärare som min syster.

(I had the same history teacher as my sister did.)

In the examples above no native speaker would make the mistake and use “likadan” instead of  “samma” but let us take a look a couple of sentences when one easily could. We can put it this way:

Lena och Katrin hade samma klänning på sig på festen igår kväll.

(Lena and Katrin wore  the same dress at the party last night. )

or we can put it this way:

Lena och Katrin hade likadana klänningar på festen igår kväll.

(Lena and Katrin wore  identical dresses at the party last night.)

Well both scenarios are possible I guess. In the first sentence Lena and Katrin actually only have one dress to share so either they take turns wearing it or it is a very large dress In the second example Lena and Katrin have one dress each but identical copies. Maybe they  both did some last minute shopping  You can therefore see that there is no big harm done if you mix up “samma” and “likadan” only it can be a little bit funny.

All right but what about when things are different? Yes, there are a few different words for that too. We have “annorlunda”, “annan”, “olik” and “skillnad” to deal with here.

skillnad (en)

First of all there is the noun “skillnad” which means “a difference”.  One example of how to use “skillnad”:

Det är skillnad på/mellan svenska och norska.

(There is a difference between Swedish and Norwegian.)

olik/olikt/olika

olik/olikt/olika are adjectives and mean “different” in English. Just like in many other words “o-” is a prefix that means “inte” which makes “olik” being the opposite of “lik” – “unlike” or “different”. Just like we can use “lik”/”likt”/”lika” to describe looks and character we can use “olika”. Like this:

ABBA-Agneta och ABBA-Frida är olika. Agneta är blond och Frida är brunhårig.

(ABBA-Agneta and ABBA-Frida look different/have different looks. Agneta is blond and Frida has brown hair.)

Norska och svenska är två olika språk.

(Norwegian and Swedish are two different languages.)

annorlunda

When using “olika” you do not put any value in the word. It is only a statement about a difference but you do not say anything about the difference being good or bad or that one is the norm and the other one is the deviation from the norm. (Thank you Phil for your suggestion of how to use ‘deviation’.) When you want to express that someone or something is not only different but actually abnormal or exceptional in some way you should use “annorlunda” instead of olik/olikt/olika. Like this:

När jag flyttade till USA var det mycket som kändes annorlunda.

(When I moved to the US a lot of things felt different to me.)

I prefer to use “annorlunda” in this case since Sweden is my reference point as it’s what is normal to me. It also happens that Swedish speakers use “annorlunda” as a polite way to express “konstigt” (odd, weird)  My dear mother for example, often uses “annorlunda” as a judgement of food that is exotic to her She would in such a case say:

Hmm, det här var ju … annorlunda.

(Hmm, this was … different.)

Thank you for reading!

Sara the Swedish Teacher

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Tags: annorlunda, Vocabulary

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